The Authorized Ender Companion

by Black, Jake

  In asking these questions, Wang-mu led Ender and Ela down a path of discovery. They hypothesized that the Descolada virus had been created and used to control/regulate the pequeninos and all other life on Lusitania. Ender approached the piggie Planter about the hypothesis. Planter said he had come to the same hypothesis and made the choice to sacrifice himself as the lab rat to determine whether pequenino behavior was self-controlled or the result of the virus. He would be purged of the Descolada and observed to see if he still had his mind and self-will.

  Ender sought out the Hive Queen to see if she could help them figure out faster-than-light travel. She had nothing to offer on that subject, but instead revealed to Ender Jane’s true origin.

  The Hive Queen taught Ender about the true nature of philotes. They existed in another space/time continuum, waiting to be called by the Formics (or any other life form) to inhabit and develop a biological body. Once in this body, the philotes created connections between creatures.

  The Formics called upon a philote to enter Ender’s body when he was in Battle School, hoping that it would create a connection between them and him. The philote’s connection was with the computer program known as the Giant’s Drink game. The philote used the connection with the program to build a bridge between Ender and the Hive Queen, and to expand and develop sentience. Its “body” existed among the computer networks but was not really a part of the computers or ansibles, as Jane and Ender originally thought. It was a part of Ender, since its main philote was in him.

  It explained to Ender why he and Jane were so closely tied to one another. It also gave him tremendous hope that she could live even if the computers and ansibles were shut down.

  The theory of calling on philotes from their home opened the door for Ender’s stepsons Grego and Olhado to come up with a way to make faster-than-light travel possible. They thought that if a person could call on the philotes that made them to return home, they could then call on those to create the pattern of the location to which they wished to travel. It would require a powerful memory to maintain the traveler’s original philotic pattern—and that of the ship itself—and prevent it from dispersing in the other dimension.

  Jane had a memory powerful enough to remember the patterns of a few potential travelers. With Ender—since she “lived” inside of him—she, Miro, and Ela were assigned to travel into space and test this theory.

  Once in Outspace, Ender and his party needed to focus on their own philotic patterns. Ender tried to do so, but was shocked to see that somehow, the philotes had created new versions of his siblings Peter and Valentine. Thanks to their philotic cores, they were real, living breathing people. Their personalities were patterned after Ender’s memories of them.

  He was shocked to meet his new “children,” Peter II and Valentine II. They had the physical appearance of their predecessors in their teen years. But many of their memories were missing because they had been created from Ender’s thoughts of them.

  Ender also helped Ela test the antiviruses she had created from her thoughts in Outspace. The antiviruses were successful, and both the Descolada on Lusitania and the genetic manipulations on Path were eradicated.

  On Lusitania, though, Ender had to confront the results of his journey to Outspace: his “children” Peter II and Valentine II. Each person’s personality was entirely as Ender had remembered it. Val was sweet and innocent while Peter II was angry and aggressive. Ender tried to care for the young people, but found it difficult to do so. Plikt took over with Valentine II while Peter II took a journey into Outspace to deliver the virus to Path and then destroy the Starways Congress.

  These two “children” of his made Ender wonder about himself. Was he the combination of Valentine’s and Peter’s personalities? Was that how he’d created them? Regardless, Ender refused to ever go back to Outspace, fearing that he would create more Peters and Valentines. But because they had been created from his mind and soul, they shared his philotic connection to Jane, which allowed both of them to utilize faster-than-light travel.

  The trip to Outspace had a positive consequence for Ender, too. Since Miro created a new, healthy body for himself, Novinha believed it was a miracle. She reached out to Ender and visited with him at the abbey. She asked him to join her among the Children of the Mind of Christ, but he refused. He wanted desperately to be reunited with her, but not in a celibate marriage, as required by the order.

  They agreed to visit each other once a month at the abbey, and both hoped the other would give up their desire for reunification and fulfill their own. It was Ender who gave in. He made the decision to join Novinha at the Children of the Mind of Christ.

  He wasn’t a devoted believer to the dogma being presented and taught by the order, but he missed his wife. He longed to be with her, even in the celibate circumstances of the Children of the Mind of Christ. He worked in the garden with her, and there the couple professed their love for one another. Novinha told him she no longer blamed him for Quim’s death and was glad they’d be together for the rest of their lives.

  Many in Lusitania, Valentine included, believed Ender had given up on saving the colony and threw away his influence. He was trying to escape from his life, and particularly the new Valentine and Peter he’d created. They depended on him to survive, but Ender’s consciousness wasn’t enough to sustain Valentine II, Peter II, Jane, and himself.

  Miro approached Ender at the abbey and asked for his help in protecting Lusitania from the impending invasion. Ender refused and wouldn’t even communicate with Jane. He sarcastically said that Jane should have Valentine II’s body. Miro and Jane thought that was a good idea and investigated the possibility while Ender returned to his work at the abbey, devoting himself not to Christ or the church, but to his beloved wife.

  A few days later, Novinha found him asleep in the gardens at the abbey. He was struggling to breathe. His wife called for help, and several from the abbey came to offer assistance. Ender was unresponsive to attempts to waken him or to improve his breathing. It looked as though Ender was dying. Novinha blamed herself for Ender’s state; he had only come to the abbey to be with her, and she had refused to leave. It was a heavy burden that haunted her as she sought help for her husband.

  Ender lay dying in the abbey, with his one-time student Plikt watching over him. She wanted to Speak his death and had devoted her life to studying him. She was there when he spoke one word from his unconscious state: “Peter.”

  Why Ender called out the name of the person he most hated was unclear, but it led to a confrontation between Plikt, Novinha, and Valentine. Each woman made a claim on loving Ender the most, and each had a good reason. But they set aside their differences when Ender briefly awoke and spoke to them.

  Valentine encouraged Novinha to let Ender go and promised, albeit briefly, that Plikt would not Speak Ender’s death as she so desperately wanted.

  Jane was forced from her computer network home shortly before Ender was to die. Jane’s consciousness, her soul, or Auía, searched desperately for a new body to inhabit. She tried to live within Ender, but he still had his Auía, and the two souls fought violently within him. He thrashed around on his deathbed, injuring Novinha, Valentine, and Plikt. Jane’s soul left, and Ender regained consciousness briefly.

  While he was awake, Novinha told him that he could leave her. She loved him and knew he loved her, but he was okay to die. It was his time. Ender smiled and knew what to do. He closed his eyes, and his Auía left his body. The shell of Ender Wiggin that remained on the table dissolved, leaving only a few hairs from his head. Novinha, Valentine, and Plikt all kept a handful of the hair. Plikt would Speak his death, paying tribute to him as he had so many others, on so many other worlds.

  Ender’s Auía left his body and searched for a new place to dwell. It felt the missing pieces that had been “donated” to Valentine II and Peter II. With the help of the Formic Hive Queen, who guided the philote-based soul to its new home (just as Ender had taken the Hive Queen to her
new home), it reunited with Valentine II’s piece of Ender’s soul and entered Peter II’s body. Peter II now carried Ender’s soul. He did not have all of Ender’s memories, but felt a shadow of them in his new life. Ender’s work was not over, though his body was gone. He would simply continue to live on as Peter II.

  When Plikt Spoke Ender’s death, she painted a picture of the man she idolized that showed him to be all he was: from history’s greatest villain Ender the Xenocide; to the great philosopher, the Speaker for the Dead; to the loving husband and father, Andrew. He had lived to the fullest of his potential and, in his legacy, lived on in all of humanity, no matter where they lived or who they were. He had protected them from unintentionally murderous invaders and saved them from themselves. He was Ender Wiggin.

  Wiggin, John Paul (Polish: Jan Pawel Wieczorek) (PL, TP, EG, SH, SP, SG)

  A child prodigy, John Paul Wieczorek was able to read adult books before any of his nine siblings, though his apparent talent went relatively ignored in his early years. John Paul, named for the pope, was one of nine children. He grew up in Poland, where the Hegemony’s population laws (which only allowed two children per family) were not strictly enforced. However, because his family was noncompliant with the laws, John Paul and his eight siblings were schooled at home by their mother, Anne.

  John Paul knew, at the age of five, that he was smarter than his siblings, but no one else believed him. This made life particularly challenging for the boy genius. He was, like his parents, dogmatically Catholic and couldn’t understand how the rest of the world could be different.

  When the International Fleet sent Captain Helena Rudolf to the Wieczorek household to test the male children, John Paul insisted he be tested, too. His parents were upset that he wanted to participate, but they relented when they realized the law required he be tested three weeks later anyway on his sixth birthday. Because of his tremendous ability in logic, shapes, philosophy, and reading, Captain Rudolf felt that he might be the child the Fleet was searching for to act as their new commander in the Formic War.

  A short time later, Captain Rudolf returned with her superior, a Finnish man named Colonel Sillian. He and John Paul had a contentious interaction during the first follow-up test. John Paul repeated much of his father’s anti-Hegemony/Fleet rhetoric, frustrating Colonel Sillian.

  When Captain Hyrum Graff arrived to make the final decision on John Paul’s readiness for Battle School, John Paul took to negotiating his family’s betterment in exchange for his compliance with the International Fleet. At only six years old, John Paul was a powerful leader and negotiator. He first tried to get his parents and siblings the privileges of compliant families, but that was unsuccessful. He realized he didn’t want to go to Battle School, but longed to go somewhere that enabled him to study in a real school, and his family could be free of the sanctions.

  He proposed moving the family to America, and then he’d go to Battle School. Graff knew that John Paul’s intent was to better his familial circumstances and then refuse to go to Battle School, thus cheating the Fleet. However, Graff was a big-picture person, and agreed to John Paul’s plan. The Wieczoreks would move to America and be allowed to stay there, even if John Paul didn’t go to Battle School.

  At age sixteen, John Paul left his family, changed his name, and renounced his religion. It was a series of acts of defiance, and they changed the course of his life.

  He did not go to Battle School, and by the time he was of college age, he was confident in his intelligence to the point of cockiness. He had taken a new last name, “Wiggin,” and with his family had new identities as full-blooded Americans. He’d enrolled in college in anticipation of taking a government position, secretly hoping to bring down the Hegemony from the inside and restoring sovereignty to all nations—particularly his native Poland.

  He was assigned by a college computer to a particular section of Human Community, taught by Theresa Brown, a graduate student and the daughter of well-known Mormon military strategist Hinckley Brown. A front-row student, John Paul noticed his teacher had an attractive figure. John Paul was able to immediately grasp the things Theresa taught, which she found annoying. John Paul enjoyed it. And he fell in love with his teacher the moment she kicked a female student out of the class for asking a question regarding Theresa’s religion affecting her teaching of science.

  John Paul decided to court this teacher and he made his first move immediately after Theresa had had a bad meeting with her dissertation committee. Ever persistent, John Paul continued his advances. He made up a small picnic outside her office at the university, ordering food in intervals so that it would be hot when she came out.

  During the picnic, John Paul and Theresa shared life stories and philosophies, and grew friendly. John Paul brazenly declared his love for her; they joked of marriage and found themselves kissing each other at the end of the picnic. Theresa soon fell in love with John Paul, too, and they eventually married.

  Together, they lived up to their families’ traditions and were noncompliant, having three children: Peter, Valentine, and Andrew “Ender.” John Paul baptized all three of his children as infants, against his wife’s wishes. They had hoped to secretly teach their children, but circumstances never allowed for it.

  He did, however, allow the International Fleet to monitor his children, convinced that none of them would be chosen to go to Battle School. Once Peter and Valentine were rejected, he and Theresa were asked to have a third child, Ender.

  When Ender was chosen to go to Battle School, John Paul was angry. He did not put up a fight when Ender made the decision to leave, though. He continued raising Peter and Valentine, which was sometimes a challenge because of Peter’s aggressiveness.

  During a period when Peter was failing school because the work he did was advanced far beyond the parameters of his assignments, John Paul defended Peter to the schoolteachers and administrators. Peter thanked his father for that in a letter he gave him the following Christmas.

  On Earth, he and Theresa knew that their remaining children had become the political pundits Locke and Demosthenes. But in order to help them be autonomous in their endeavors, neither John Paul nor Theresa revealed their knowledge. They did, however, occasionally use this knowledge to manipulate their children’s stances on world affairs. Although Ender was the hero of the Formic War, John Paul understood that his boy could never return to Earth. After receiving a letter from Hyrum Graff that subtly reiterated that fact, John Paul and Theresa manipulated their other children into writing essays calling for Ender’s exile into space. Though John Paul would miss his son terribly and was heartbroken when Valentine decided to join Ender in space, he knew it was for the best.

  John Paul would often share his own thoughts on the state of the world with his son Peter after reading one of Peter’s “Locke” essays. This aggravated Peter, but John Paul tried his best to support his son.

  When Peter finally decided to reveal his identity to the world, Theresa and John Paul told him they were proud of him and would continue to support him however they could. This support meant moving to Brazil.

  Peter was made Hegemon and placed the center of his world government in Brazil. John Paul and Theresa joined their son there and were offered jobs in the new, rising government, but they refused the positions.

  A few months later, Peter brought Achilles to the Hegemony compound. John Paul conferred with his son when it appeared that Theresa was betraying Peter to Achilles. John Paul theorized that Theresa was actually plotting to kill Achilles. Peter was stunned that his mother would even try such a thing.

  John Paul told Peter that he always loved him, but Peter doubted his words. John Paul left Peter to figure out Theresa’s actions on his own.

  When John Paul confronted his wife about her plans to kill Achilles, the couple decided that it would be better for Peter if they did not kill Achilles, but instead made it appear that Achilles was trying to kill them. This led John Paul to try tracking Achilles’s comput
er movements and discovered that Peter was already trying unsuccessfully to do likewise. John Paul and Peter’s computer expert, Ferreira, worked together to figure out what Achilles was doing, but it appeared to be nothing.

  The plan to have Achilles appear to be targeting the Wiggins fell apart. But John Paul received a message from Bean telling him that Achilles was actually in control of everything—he’d arranged for his own rescue at Peter’s hands, and was now playing Peter.

  John Paul and Theresa understood the message and informed Peter. They took their son from the compound to the United States. There, they watched proudly as Peter maintained his authority as Hegemon, giving a press conference that denounced Achilles.

  Both John Paul and Theresa were committed to protecting Peter and helping him fulfill his destiny as the leader of the world. They even took to carrying firearms and serving as pseudobodyguards.

  Hyrum Graff invited the Wiggin family to stay at the orbiting space-station home of the Ministry of Colonization, which was the same satellite that was once Battle School. John Paul was fascinated by the school and enjoyed seeing the layout of the space station. His time on the station was short-lived, however, as someone leaked their arrival to Earth, and it was no longer safe for the family to be there.

  John Paul figured out that their return to Earth was a ruse to catch the mole. He played his part perfectly. While hiding out on the station, he asked Dimak where Ender’s quarters had been when it was Battle School. Dimak didn’t take the time to show John Paul.

  Theresa, who hadn’t figured out the ruse as quickly as John Paul, was annoyed that he had and she hadn’t. She wanted to go back to Earth but also played her role in the plan well. She disagreed with Peter and Graff on how to proceed, but knew that it was best that she go along with it.